By

on August 2, 2015

Rousey did almost exactly what she had promised to do on Saturday, steamrolling overmatched challenger Bethe Correia with a wild flurry of punches before knocking her flat just 34 seconds into the first round.

It was the sixth straight defense of Rousey's UFC women's bantamweight title, boosted her undefeated record to 12-0 and stood as an emphatic statement that the rest of her competition—already so far behind—is just never going to catch her.

By

on July 30, 2015

That includes oddsmakers, who’ve made her an underdog of historic proportions; the UFC, which has already gone as far as to book Rousey’s next fight; and even Brazilian MMA fans, who are shown here vocally supporting Rousey on Wednesday during open workouts in what ought to be Correia’s home turf.

In short, nobody is buying this matchup. It’s expected to be a complete wash. A cakewalk. A gimme.

Weirdly, therein lies much of the intrigue for this event. Without much else to write home about on its super-sized main card, the job of convincing UFC fans to part with the $60 pay-per-view cost largely falls to Rousey and Correia.

By

on July 28, 2015

You might not have noticed right away, since Rousey seems to be mad at everyone all the time, but the women’s bantamweight champion has said UFC 190 is personal for her. She insists she’ll teach Correia a lesson when the two fighters meet Saturday in Rio de Janeiro in the main event of an otherwise lackluster pay-per-view card.

“I'm not going to be nice to this chick,” Rousey said in early July, per MailOnline's Justin Feck. “She is going to have a very long painful lesson that night. I've never looked forward to beating up someone more in my entire life. This is the only time I will say I will purposely drag a fight out to punish someone.”

By

on July 26, 2015

After 14 months as champion, TJ Dillashaw conclusively proved his case as the best men’s bantamweight fighter in the world on Saturday at UFC on Fox 16.

His fourth-round TKO of former champ Renan Barao made his argument airtight, reaffirming the dominant performance he used to take the title last May. It took more than a year and two previous false starts to put together this rematch, but Dillashaw used the opportunity to emphatically close the door on Barao for good.

This was one of those fights we simply needed to see again. Barao had just been too dominant and Dillashaw too unproven prior to their initial meeting at UFC 173. Despite the fact that he took the gold from Barao last spring with an equally dominant performance, this weekend’s victory was essential for Dillashaw to truly cement the changing of the guard.

Now the really hard part begins.

The bantamweight landscape Dillashaw inherits isn’t exactly brimming with exciting, big-money opportunities. One of the likely reasons matchmakers were so adamant about rematching him with Barao was that there simply weren’t many other immediate options.

By

on July 23, 2015

T.J. Dillashaw and RenanBarao will finally rematch on Saturday at UFC on Fox 16.

It's a repeat pairing the fight company has been trying to put together for more than a year, ever since Dillashaw shocked the world by taking the men's bantamweight title from Barao last May at UFC 173.

In the aftermath, their second meeting has been put off by a weight-cutting snafu (by Barao) and an injury (to Dillashaw). The former resulted in what stands as Dillashaw's only successful title defense to date, a win over newcomer and short-notice replacement Joe Soto at UFC 177.

Suffice to say, there's still a lot we stand to learn by watching Dillashaw and Barao go at it again. This fight should conclusively prove if what we witnessed last year was a true changing of the guard, or if it was just a dominant champion having one bad night.

By

on July 21, 2015

In trying to determine who is the UFC's most outspoken featherweight, it might take a while to consider Jose Aldo.

ConorMcGregor's Gaelic gift of gab garners most of the headlines at 145 pounds. These days, you might even think of Frankie Edgar first after the former lightweight champion jumped on the lip of the Octagon to challenge McGregor at UFC 189 two weeks ago and then took to Twitter to compare the new interim champion to a cow the UFC must milk before Edgar leads him to slaughter.

But Aldo also talks—and when he does, there's no need to ask him how he really feels.

In fact, it's starting to seem like the one true king of the featherweight division is having a hard time not keeping it 100. Take Aldo's press conference last week in Brazil and the resulting video posted by MMA Fighting's Guilherme Cruz, which is pretty much 16 uninterrupted minutes of Aldo spitting hot fire on the major issues of the day (NSFW language in video and below):

By

on July 16, 2015

It was hard to shake that strangeness on Wednesday night, watching 36-year-old UFC lifer Frank Mir fell 29-year-old powerhouse Todd Duffee like a stick of lumber in the main event of Fight Night 71.

The 265-pound class has long been one of the oldest, shallowest wells on the roster. This year, however, it’s starting to seem like—to borrow a phrase from new interim featherweight champ ConorMcGregor—the distinguished elders of the heavyweight division aren’t just here to take part.

They’re here to take over.

Mir’s victory over Duffee was his second first-round stoppage in a row and his second this year, extending an improbable turnaround after he went 0-4 from 2012 to 2014. Even Mir seemed a bit surprised about how it all went down once he had a few minutes to reflect on it.

By

on July 15, 2015

Last weekend, ConorMcGregor cemented himself as the biggest star in the UFC with his knockout win over Chad Mendes at UFC 189.

It was one for the history books, capping off a thrilling fight card that ranks among the best main cards in UFC history. The atmosphere, the crowd, the entrances: All of it set McGregor up to make a statement, and that's exactly what he did.

But then on Sunday, the UFC announced that McGregor would coach the next season of The Ultimate Fighter against Urijah Faber. Social media groaned; why were the UFC so intent on overexposing McGregor? Wouldn't it be better to just put him on the sidelines for a few months, to make the fans desperate to see him?

To discuss the UFC's decision to name McGregor as a TUF coach, Jeremy Botter and Jonathan Snowden got together to answer the question: Is too much ConorMcGregor a bad thing?

By

on July 15, 2015

If any knowledge can be gained from Tuesday’s announcement that 38-year-old FedorEmelianenko is plotting a return to the cage, perhaps that’s it. It doesn’t seem to matter who you are or where you’re from, once MMA gets its hooks in you, it’s awfully hard to get free.

This is even true, it appears, for Emelianenko—the man who marched through a 12-year, 39-fight career during the sport’s golden age without ever showing us much more than a stoic gaze and a murderous right hand. It’s true for the guy who was already regarded as the greatest heavyweight of all time. It’s true for the guy who never gave any indication that he wanted anything other than to live simply in his obscure Russian hometown, surrounded by his family, friends and his religion.

By

on July 14, 2015

Aside from questionable taste in chest tattoos, perhaps there are no obvious similarities between the UFC’s newest male superstar and its last one.

Yet, the further Conor McGregor stomps into the forefront of the MMA world, the more his meteoric journey is reminiscent of Brock Lesnar’s rise to power in the UFC six years ago—and maybe sniffs of Lesnar’s eventual fall, too.

Sound crazy? On the surface, these two men seem like complete opposites.

Lesnar was an enormous man from the upper Midwest, for starters. He was a brooding, disagreeable fighter who always seemed more at ease lugging a deer carcass through the underbrush than allowing mere mortals to ask him questions or take his picture. An NCAA champion at 23 and superstar pro wrestler by age 25, Lesnar’s lucrative athletic future was never really in doubt.

Edited By

Jonathan Snowden

Jonathan Snowden is Bleacher Report's lead combat and motor sports writer. He's also the author of Total MMA and The MMA Encyclopedia. Ironically, despite being an Army vet, Jonathan is scared of physical confrontations of any kind. Contact him on Twitte
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Jeremy Botter

Chad Dundas

Chad Dundas' debut novel "Champion of the World" will be published in 2016. Before joining Bleacher Report as a lead writer, he worked as an MMA columnist for ESPN.com, The Sporting News and NBC Sports.
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